Where y'acht, Tony, you fricking piece of.....

I had the distinct bittersweet pleasure of listening to much of the Congressional hearing last week featuring the grilling of, and occasional apology to, BP CEO Tony Hayward. Depending on the end result of this series of investigations, and (hopefully) eventual prosecutions and convictions, I think it may possibly be something we, the citizens, will be able to look on with, oh, I don't know, maybe... pride. Congressman Barton notwithstanding, there were passionate denouncements of the company's actions (and lack thereof) by the likes of Henry Waxman, Bart Stupak, and even my very own representative, Republican Steve Scalise. Hayward, meanwhile, seemed like he was preparing for an eventual criminal trial and oh-so carefully trying not to incriminate himself. Of course, he may just have been distracted by the yacht races he attended over the weekend. Oh, excuse me one moment while I check my guillotine auction on Ebay.

Another issue that I believe bears examination is the assertion by London mayor Boris Johnson, among others, that criticism of the largest company in Great Britain is "a matter of national concern," given the importance of BP's contributions to British pension funds at a time when the UK's economy is seen as one of the most fragile in Europe. As you almost certainly know, BP has suspended the payment of dividends as part of the agreement with/shakedown by the Obama Administration. Thus, some observers legitimately fear a meltdown on the order of those suffered by the economies of Greece and Iceland in recent years. Therefore, following the logic of corporate capitalism, criticism of BP's responsibility for and handling of the most serious enivironmental catastrophe in United States history should be muted, for the good of the global economic order as a whole.

That, in a nutshell, my friends, is the logical and moral framework of corporate capitalism. Surely you would agree that the normal, natural human emotion regarding those most affected by the disaster to this point (the families of the 11 killed in the original explosion, those whose livelihoods are directly affected by the closing of fisheries and beaches) is one of compassion and empathy, joined by outrage at those responsible. But what if your pension fund or 401(K) is dependent upon the financial well-being of BP? Are those natural, normal feelings now distorted and twisted by what seem like completely valid feelings of self-interest? This is what the perverted logic of corporate capitalism leads to, the unhealthy denial of the best, most compassionate, most just instincts in each of us.

And let me make it crystal clear that the phenomenon I am describing is meaningless without both the adjective and the noun. Corporate. capitalism. I am not opposed to capitalism as such. As a fiercely indpendent guerrilla bookseller, I participate in two fairly free-wheeling markets, on the street level in New Orleans and online through the corporate entity Amazon.com. At the street markets, I pay a set fee in order to display and sell my wares, often through negotiation of the stated prices, building relationships, responding to trends, tailoring my stock to the customer base. On Amazon.com, I pay a fee in order to take advantage of the website's international presence, allowing me to sell my stock to customers in New York City, Ithaca, Fresno, Eugene, or Rio de Janeiro, to take the last week as an example. Customer feedback is available to browsers, prices can be compared and changed according to supply and demand for a particular book. In short, there is a rather impressive kind of self-regulating free market purity which the free market fundamentalists would like to project onto the system as a whole, if, as they would argue, the government would just stay out of the way. However, my very occasional mistakes lead only to an unhappy customer who is out of the book he or she ordered. There is no constant stream of printer's ink pouring out of my garage/book room, fouling my neighborhood and putting my neighbors out of work.

I would therefore argue that, in my experience, commerce can take place, on a local, regional, national, and even international level, without exploitation (although one could validly argue that the customer is choosing not to support the independent bookseller right there in Ithaca or Eugene), if the scale of the relationship is appropriate. Although Amazon is operating on a gigantic scale compared to the Broad Flea market on the second Saturday of the month in New Orleans, the service they are providing me is the facilitation of a one-on-one relationship with that customer in Ithaca. Is that a genuinely responsible use of the available communications technology to facilitate sustainable commerce (I am, after all, recycling the books I sell), or I am engaged in self-serving rationalization in order to justify my own relationship with a multinational corporation that is not committing the most egregious crimes, compared to BP, but may be perpetuating the overall corporate culture that makes those crimes possible, or even inevitable? I think I'll have to chew that cud a while longer.

Of course, BP would like nothing better than for conscientious citizens to lose themselves in self-paralyzing navel-gazing, unable to act until we've purged ourselves of all petroleum-based products in our homes and garages. Despite what the Bible advocates, , I refuse to remove the Scion from my eye before I criticize the yacht I'd like to shove up Tony Heyward's a.......

More to come, and maybe even some book talk again one of these days.